


Of Cigarettes & Copulation

by MrSelfDestruct97



Series: The Placebo Effect [2]
Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, BDSM, Bittersweet Ending, Bleak, Drug Abuse, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Film Noir, Gang Violence, Gritty, Gun Violence, Hardboiled, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, LGBTQ Themes, Multi, Politics, Poverty, Prostitution, Pulp, Rape/Non-con Elements, Urban, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:01:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24267874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrSelfDestruct97/pseuds/MrSelfDestruct97
Summary: One year ago, Jacob Delsin's wife passed away. Now finding his meaning at the bottom of the bottle, time seems to blur away.  That is until an innocuous hookup with a snarky young girl. Jacob thinks little when she disappears in the morning, but trouble follows her and interferes with his otherwise menial existence. Forced his hand in violence; Jacob spirals down a path of brutal vigilantism against an imposing criminal empire. before he finds the elusive femme fatale herself; May Lawson.The duo is soon aided by a motley crew of others; such as detective Chuck Garland, investigator Lyla Painter, gangster Elijah T. Cole, and MC vice-president Travis Renton, who supply Jacob and May with refuge and an arsenal of weapons to plan a violent counterattack, but with goons in every corner of NYC, it's left to Jacob and May to work their way to victory from the shadows.'Of Cigarettes & Copulation' serves as a loose sequel to 'Blank Earth' and follows in the shoes of classic hard-boiled pulp noir legends Chandler, Hammett, Thompson, and Spillane, combined with a tinge of smutty erotica and a dose of Cooper's signature foul-mouthed switchblade wit and streetwise grit that will charm and shock readers.
Relationships: Jacob Delsin & May Lawson
Series: The Placebo Effect [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1462504





	Of Cigarettes & Copulation

“Play with murder enough and it gets you one of two ways. It makes you sick, or you get to like it.”  
\- Dashiell Hammett

* * *

_December 31st, 2018 - 4:15 am_

TINY DROPLETS OF RAIN collected on the fogged apartment window, falling like tears from all the cherubs that must’ve been crying in heaven at that very moment. It was well out of season, but the rain only brought back all sorts of painful memories. I had attempted to drown that life deep in a poor man’s concoction of bourbon and vicodin, but though blurred they echoed onward through my head like a cassette tape stuck looping on rewind, mechanical screaming of my own torment, the sound of static and the incomprehensible, yet, familiar voices of those who were no longer breathing, reminding me of a toll, or rather a tax I had too long left unpaid. I stared out at the early morning abyss, greeted by the glare of the streetlights, flashing neon signs and the distant wail of police sirens, the unofficial soundtrack of the city that never slept temporarily slumbering beneath me. The endless noise in my head continued, but this was as quiet as it ever got, and unfortunately, as much as it ever would. See, luckily for us, I knew from the first bullet how this all would end, the final explosive act of that aching in the center of my soul, or rather, lack thereof, and whether it was an act of some twisted fate or the consequence of my own transgressions seemed to make little difference. It would be morning very soon, the winter sun would finally shine upon this god-forsaken city and everything that had come to light in the last twenty-four hours would reach its natural, blood-soaked conclusion, a post-mortem, an epilogue. It would've been perfect, too perfect, had it not been for _her_. 

_She_ sat there, her legs crossed, her pale skin stretched thin over her bones, patterned with scars, burns, marks - where they had come from was not a place for me to wonder, she brought a lit cigarette back to her blood-red lips and I was entranced. She didn’t know what I knew at that moment, perhaps that was for the best, at least, that’s what I told myself at the time. But in that second, my eyes, as they always had been, were glued to her. That dame of black-and-red tugged at my entire being with the gravity of a black hole; one that envelops and swallows. Her fragile beauty seemed only to glow in the candlelight and her tired, doe-like eyes could pierce the moon, but they were lost in the sea of the cigarette smoke she exhaled. One would be forgiven for thinking she was already dead, she had signed the autopsy papers herself and was the taxidermy to prove it, but next to her, I had never felt so _alive_. God. There was something about her, I couldn’t place my finger on it, but it was stabbing deep into the cold black pulp of flesh that used to be my heart and I could feel it sinking in my chest. What was that sensation? If she only knew. I had known the warm embrace of love, I had known the devilish smirk of lust, and had become more than familiar with the chokehold of loss, we were practically engaged, but this was something else entirely - some alien emotion, an alluring mystery like you'd read in old pulp magazines, it raced through my veins like heroin.

I made my way back to the bedside, to her, those lips and hips calling to me like the sirens of old. I knew that no matter how much I wanted it to, I couldn’t make this moment last forever, but I had every intention of holding onto it as long as I could; feeling the velvet-like satin texture of the sheets that were the color of merlot, breathing in the lingering smell of incense and vanilla that matched the taste of her smooth snow-white skin, appreciating every mark and blemish that made her perfect -- if not to anyone else, if not to even herself, then at least to me. It wasn't a sexual urge that had me addicted to her, although, on that first night our adultery was surely the catalyst for all that had transpired, rather it was the look deep in her eyes. From the moment I met her, I had heard nothing but callousness in the rasp of her voice, seen nothing but the stare of death and pure apathy in her face, and had watched her cut through men like sharpened knives through butter, but beyond those eyes, there was so much more. There was a certain type of sadness, a pain, yet, she was timid, perhaps even frightened, she reminded me of a small white bunny being picked up by a loud child. I wondered what she could possibly fear so much that it could remain so deeply engraved in that shade of blue for every second, and more importantly, why it had only seemed to more poignantly target me as the days had passed. It clicked then and there, and I felt a void open in my gut. She was afraid of _me_ , and not in the way you may think. I would never hurt her, she knew as much, at that moment, we probably trusted each other more than any two people ever could. But, to be completely honest with you, I had been terrified myself, for the first and only time, to be in the presence of someone who so completely and thoroughly understood me it was like a pane of glass, my mind shouted ten thousand apologies towards her, but they were silenced as I bit my tongue. She seemed convinced that I was going to hurt her. I couldn't comprehend it, maybe that was my own fault, maybe she _did_ know, maybe she thought herself so low that she figured she wouldn't be able to save me even if she tried, maybe it was easier for her to shut away the world and recede than to acknowledge the thought of losing someone, anyone, again, she had lost so much already, but that kind of thing was foreign to me, I had always been the backdrop, the wallpaper, even when I was the main feature of someone's house I was ultimately glossed over, easily replaced and quickly forgotten, it was more common for me to deal with loss than for anyone to ever fear to lose me, and that feeling was the tragedy that I hadn’t quite grasped on that final night.

I placed my hand on her knee and her eyes seemed to spark back to life. They immediately shifted towards mine, staring into mine like the spotlights of a prison and I was an escaped convict, but she gave me a lil’ smile that seemed to suggest that everything would be okay, it made me sad that I could tell it was just as much about convincing herself as it was reassuring me, she put her smoke out in the glass ashtray that was sitting on the end table and reached out to me with her small tobacco-stained fingers, grabbing hold of my hand tightly while lightly playing with my oversized fingers. I leaned in and softly kissed her hand, in retrospect.it was a rather cheesy display of affection, but nevertheless, it was an expression of something foreign to her, she’d have blushed if she knew how, but once again her eyes spoke the mountain of words that she never could. I may not have understood what it was about her, but at least then, I finally knew that she felt the same, in her own kind of way, and for that short while, everything was alright.


End file.
